Debt?! Why’d it have to be debt? — A mess too big for Indiana Jones

One of my favourite movies is Raiders of the Lost Ark. It’s a classic tale of overcoming obstacles and highlights one of my favourite and most persistent adventurers, Harrison Ford.

Through the twists and turns, who can forget how many challenging threats to his safety and careful planning were followed by larger tribulations and road blocks? With the state of affairs in Alberta, looming debt and deficit, and literal road blocks to our natural resources, it is not a stretch to infer that this is how many Albertans feel right now.

The NDP have implemented a large, overreaching, debt accumulating government. The NDP misled Albertans when they promised a balanced budget in 2019. Instead, the Notley NDP delivered a $9 billion operating deficit (annual expenses on the taxpayer’s credit card), a $15.5 billion consolidated deficit and $55 billion in debt. All of this is topped off by $1.9 billion in interest is looking like obstacles that Harrison Ford himself would have trouble defeating.

Every Alberta family now finds itself shouldering $55,000 in provincial debt, supporting $5 million of interest payments a day to wealthy bondholders, all the while receiving less services. For example, what Albertans pay in interest every single day, translates to the same cost as employing 1,500 teachers.

Next time we hear about class sizes being too large, school transportation funds lacking or our southeastern Alberta seniors not receiving full and adequate care, please remember how much of your tax dollars the NDP is sending to some of the world’s richest bondholders in New York, Toronto and Zurich instead. Unlike Harrison Ford, Rachel Notley and Joe Cici do not have a plan to navigate Alberta out of the darkness. Their idea of a “plan” is to have your daily interest cost double to $10 million, your family’s total provincial debt burden to grow to $100,000 and to saddle you with a 67-per-cent increase to the carbon tax to add to their general revenue.

If the NDP are re-elected in 2019, they are projecting our provincial debt to reach $96 billion by 2023 with annual interest expenses coming in at a fiery $3.7 billion.

This is looking like a challenge that Harrison Ford himself would have trouble overcoming.

Our United Conservative Party team, myself included as finance critic, intend to leave things better than we found them. Albertans need a government that will not unfairly tie the hands of wealth creators and everyday people with excess regulation, spending and taxation.

I have absolute confidence in the ability of Albertans to acknowledge the disaster facilitated by the NDP and respond to this challenge with an overwhelming United Conservative Party victory in 2019.

Drew Barnes is MLA (UCP) for Cypress-Medicine Hat